House passes cybersecurity bill by Cory Bennett and Cristina Marcos.
From the post:
The House on Wednesday passed the first major cybersecurity bill since the calamitous hacks on Sony Entertainment, Home Depot and JPMorgan Chase.
Passed 307-116, the Protecting Cyber Networks Act (PCNA), backed by House Intelligence Committee leaders, would give companies liability protections when sharing cyber threat data with government civilian agencies, such as the Treasury or Commerce Departments.
“This bill will strengthen our digital defenses so that American consumers and businesses will not be put at the mercy of cyber criminals,” said House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.).
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Lawmakers, government officials and most industry groups argue more data will help both sides better understand their attackers and bolster network defenses that have been repeatedly compromised over the last year.
Privacy advocates and a group of mostly Democratic lawmakers worry the bill will simply shuttle more sensitive information to the National Security Agency (NSA), further empowering its surveillance authority. Many security experts agree, adding that they already have the data needed to study hackers’ tactics.
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The connection between sharing threat data and loss of privacy to the NSA escapes me.
At present, the NSA can or is:
- Monitoring all Web traffic
- Monitoring all Email traffic
- Collecting all Phone metadata
- Collecting all Credit Card information
- Collecting all Social Media data
- Collecting all Travel data
- Collecting all Banking data
- Has spied on Congress and other agencies
- Can demand production of other information and records from anyone
- Probably has a copy of your income tax and social security info
You are concerned private information about you might be leaked to the NSA in the form of threat data?
Seriously?
Anything is possible so something the NSA doesn’t already know could possibly come to light, but I would not waste my energy opposing a bill that is virtually no additional threat to privacy.
The NSA is the issue that needs to be addressed. Its very existence is incompatible with any notion of privacy.